The One Who Lit the First Flame
The summons came with silence.
No courier. No sigil glow. No whisper.
Just seven Warden-sealed candles placed outside his door.
Each one unlit.
Each one carved with a different crest.
He recognized three.
Luminaries. Mediators. Sentinels.
The other four were older.
Symbols not taught anymore.
Symbols buried.
He was expected.
Pathfinder Rell didn't escort him this time.
She stood back as he passed, her face carved in stone.
"You don't step into the Council's light unless they already know your shadow," she said.
Keiran didn't reply.
He simply walked the stone hallway to the deep chamber at the Concordium's core.
The Hall of Names.
The doors parted without a sound.
Inside, the Council of Seven waited.
They did not wear armor.
They did not speak in unison.
They did not look at him like a threat.
They looked at him like a question.
Seven seats. Six filled.
The seventh sat empty.
A place reserved, he realized, not for another Warden—
But for a name.
The one at the center rose first. A tall, ashen-skinned woman in violet robes, eyes veiled in pale glass.
"Keiran," she said. "Or shall we say… the One Who Lit the First Flame."
His mark pulsed.
"I don't understand."
"You will," another said, older, with silver rings burned into his palms. "You're not the first. But you may be the last."
Another voice:
"You carry a tether older than any Concordium seal. A brand formed not by spellwork, but by remembrance itself."
"And remembrance, child," the veiled woman said, "is a dangerous thing."
The chamber dimmed.
One of the seven—an Archivist in grey—stood and carried forward an object wrapped in black cloth.
They unwrapped it slowly.
A page. No ink. Just etching burned into it with rune-fire.
A prophecy.
Sealed. For centuries.
"We weren't supposed to read this again," the Archivist said. "But your arrival lit the edges."
"It called us."
He read it aloud.
Voice trembling.
When the moons near kinship once more,
And silence takes the name from stone,
The Echo-born will rise unasked—
Not to save, but to reopen what was buried.
A candle shall burn backwards.
And the world shall misremember itself to death.
Keiran said nothing.
His breath slowed.
Even the mark went still.
"That's me?" he asked.
The veiled Warden nodded once.
"You are not the flame."
"You are the match."
He stepped back.
"Then why not stop me?"
Another Councilor—this one draped in ink-stained cloth—spoke for the first time.
"Because we tried. In every lifetime. Every loop."
"And every time," the veiled woman finished, "you found your name again."
The empty chair behind them glowed faintly.
The back bore an engraving, so faint it was nearly invisible.
He stepped closer.
The name had been scorched off.
But the title remained:
SOLITUDO.
The Solituded One.
His fate. His echo. His curse.
Then, something new.
From the shadows behind the chair, a child stepped forward.
Barefoot. Silent. Holding a candle.
The flame burned inward.
The child raised it toward him and whispered—
"You lit me."
Keiran froze.
"I don't remember you."
"That's what you always say."
The candle flickered—
And vanished.
The Council stood in full now.
One by one, each member placed their palms over their hearts.
"The loop begins again," the Archivist said.
"The moons near alignment," said the veiled Warden.
"And your mark," said the inked one, "will no longer wait to be fed."
As Keiran left the chamber, he saw it—
Reflected in the obsidian floor.
His face.
But not quite.
Older. Scarred differently.
Eyes brighter. Sadder.
And a whisper beneath it all:
You have been here before.